Meditation Recap

On March 4, 2017the first meditation session of the year was held at AWIB resource center (ARC). It was given by the gracious Megbar Ayalew (Magi). It began at 9:00 AM and closed at 11:00 AM. 14 participants were present in the room and we were all looking forward to relaxation. Magi sitting in a comfortable way on her chair, she began explaining why we need meditation for.

Life happens only in the present moment. The past has already passed and the future is yet to come. We only have control on the present moment. What do we want in life? We should list out and ask for it to get answers. In order to getanswers we must be in the present moment and should be able to silent our chattering minds.

Meditation helps us to stay in the present and have focus. We can do this through different breathing techniques.

If we breathe short, our anger is short and we will have frustrations. Study shows only 30% of our lung is used. That means we are wasting 70% of it. So why not breathe deeper and enhance our health.

What we think of others comes back to us, so we have to be careful of what we think. We need to stay positive.

After the explanation we directly get in to breathing techniques. Although there are several types of breathing techniques, we did two of them for the session.

Deep breathing - we did this for about 5-10 minutes. We sat straight on our chairs first then we breathed in deeply, held our breath for a few moments and breathed out.

Alternate Nostril breathing –we did this by sitting in the same way as the first, holding the left and right nostril with our fingers alternatively. We closed our eyes while breathing in, holding our breath for a few moments and then breathing out. While we were doing this Magi was telling us to focus on our breathing, our surrounding, different parts of our body (e.g. leg, heart, head…), up and down from head to toe.

After doing this for about 20-30 minutes we were all asked to open our eyes and say what we felt about it.

What participants felt after it was

Peaceful

Focusing

Relaxed

Didn’t want to open their eyes

Calm

In short of breath

Magi continued on explaining the benefits of meditation. Meditation helps us to discover ourselves. When our mind is silent and we become conscious of ourselves we get focused, we ask questions, we get the chance to be with ourselves and get answers from the heart or the higher being. We have to give time to ourselves. If we breathe deeply 5-10 minutes every day or when we feel stressed or frustrated, we can look at the difference it makes.

We should know for sure that we are bigger than our jobs, our names, our intelligence,… etc. We should make relationship with ourselves and be able to listen to our hearts in order to find ourselves.

Let us ask ourselves-

Who are we?

What do we want?

What is my purpose?

When we wake up in the morning let us plan our day after deep breathing

At night let us ask how our day was?

What did we do right? What did we do wrong? What did we learn? What can we improve?

We are souls in the body, the soul has a gift from above and we have to discover that. We all have Divine qualities (such us being kind, loving, compassionate…) within us to some extent which needs to be nurtured.

Through meditation we can silent the chattering, controlling, scattered mind, watch our ego and come to the self. To develop positive attitude and discover ourselves and what we want, we should also consider the following:

When you do something take away the negative and stick with the positive